College Outreach Program
They say I have a free choice. But without housing on campus for me and my baby, without on-site daycare, without maternity coverage in my health insurance, it sure doesn't feel like I have much of a choice.
What's Wrong With This Picture?
When Feminists for Life speakers address college audiences, we ask, "Do you know anyone on campus who has become pregnant?" Audience members nod.
Then we ask, "Have you ever seen a visibly pregnant student on campus?" The nodding stops.
What's wrong with this picture? According to Planned Parenthood's research arm, the Alan Guttmacher Institute, 10% of all college-age women become pregnant each year. Where have all the pregnant women gone? One of two things happens:
- Women have abortions. Women seek help and support from counselors, friends, or family. What they hear is: Abortion is the answer. Don't give up your dreams. Make the "problem" go away. Women know deep down that it's not so simple, but what other choices do they have? One of every five abortions is performed on a college woman.
- Women quit school to have their baby. Women cannot find the practical or emotional support they need to be both parents and students, so they must leave school. They intend to return someday soon, but many never do.
The numbers are chilling. Here's what happened in just one year, for example, at one university in the northeast, based on figures provided by the school's health center and a nearby pregnancy care center:
Of 3,000 college women, 600 had pregnancy tests; 300 of these tests were positive; and 6 women had babies.
The math is pretty simple.
Looking around most of today's college campuses, you would have no way of knowing that there are options other than abortion.
College students constantly hear a one-sided message.
Abortion is essential to women's
equality.
It's empowering.
It's your choice.
Statistics and women's own experiences show these statements to be false, yet they are terribly effective. In fact, a 1996 Gallup poll found that the college experience for women is "a major - even revolutionary - influence" when it comes to their views on abortion:
Women with a high school education are more pro-life (47%) than pro-choice (37%), while those who have attended college but not completed a four-year program are more pro-choice (59%) - an increase in the pro-choice group of 22 points. The margin of pro-choice over pro-life responses is even greater among women who have completed a four-year college program - 73% to 24%.
Addressing the Real Problem
Feminists for Life asks the all-important question: What do women really want?
Most women do not want to have an abortion. Most women do not want to leave school. Pregnant and parenting students want, and deserve, other viable choices.
Feminists for Life's College Outreach Program is all about choices - the choices women truly want.
The College Outreach Program involves a unique range of stakeholders: college students, faculty, administrators, counselors, campus clinic staff and service providers across the ideological spectrum - pro-life activists, pregnancy care centers, and even abortion providers and advocates who agree that abortion is a tragedy and are willing to work with us to address the root causes that contribute to abortion.
Feminists for Life works with these partners on two levels of action.
- Providing practical resources for pregnant and parenting students, so they can complete their education.
- Challenging the assumptions that create this no-win situation for college women - and men.
What People Are Saying
About
FFL's College Outreach Program
Kathryn Getek, Princeton University, former president, Ivy League Coalition for Life, said:
"Feminists for Life's strength is in articulating something known but rarely spoken: being pro-life is as much about respecting women and equality as it is about protecting the unborn. Of all the ways that FFL has practiced this belief, the most effective and remarkable is their College Outreach Program. On college campuses, for the most at-risk population, FFL approaches the matter in terms that make people listen. If we truly care about the rights of women, the very least we can do is make carrying pregnancy to term a realistic choice. That's exactly what FFL has started to do with their lectures, Pregnancy Resource Forums, ads and kits. The lives of women and children are undoubtedly better for it."
Following Serrin Foster's address, "The Feminist Case Against Abortion," at Swarthmore, the headline in the campus newspaper spoke volumes about the importance of her message:
A student at Villanova, Dorothy Pauch, remarked after hearing Foster speak:
"When you have speakers who point out why abortion actually exploits women and hurts them along with the child, then it really starts to all make sense. Serrin Foster really showed us by being pro-life you can genuinely help women."
After FFL's first Pregnancy Resources Forum at Georgetown University, student Vanessa Clay said:
"The audience engaged in a truly productive discussion despite strong differences of opinion."
Planned Parenthood Federation of America:
FFL's College Outreach Program is "the newest and most challenging concept in anti-choice campus organizing" and "could have a profound impact" on college campuses "as well as Planned Parenthood's public education and advocacy efforts."